While you were worrying about trains, your car was trying to kill you

I am buying a ticket for the death train. It’s OK, I tell myself. Sure, not long ago a train on this particular Amtrak route derailed and killed a bunch of people. But I have to get from Philadelphia to New York somehow. I choose the train.

For one thing, the tickets are more expensive than usual, which means that even though the news has been filled for the last week with the grisly details of the crash, a lot of people, like me, are buying tickets anyway. And I rode this exact same train — from New York, to Philadelphia — the day before the crash. The greatest tragedy on that trip was the unbelievable slowness of the on-board wireless network and the tragically stilted courtship going on in the seat behind me. (Man: “Do you like Grey’s Anatomy?” Woman: “Sort of.”)